Cape Town University puts brakes on Israel boycott

The school’s council secretary said that a number of issues would have to be clarified first before the resolution could go to a vote.

By World Israel News Staff

The University of Cape Town (UCT) council refused on Saturday to adopt a resolution imposing an academic boycott on Israel, the TimesLive reported.

Several issues would have to be clarified first before the resolution could go to a vote, Council Secretary Royston Pillay said, according to the South African news website.

The council sent the resolution back to the university’s senate, which had earlier voted for it, asking for “a full assessment of the sustainability impact” and that a “more consultative process was necessary before the matter could be considered any further,” said TimesLive.

The resolution caused bitter debate at UCT and in academia, in general. It reportedly said: “UCT will not enter into any formal relationships with Israeli academic institutions operating in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as other Israeli academic institutions enabling gross human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The South African Zionist Federation had asked UCT alumni for “urgent assistance in taking a stand against this dangerous attempt to attack Israel and undermine academic freedom at UCT.”

In a statement on Tuesday, federation chair Ben Swartz and Cape Town local chair Rowan Polovin said that a boycott would damage the university’s reputation.

The Rule of Law Project (RLP) said that a motion to restrict interaction between UCT and Israeli academic institutions would be unconstitutional and flout the doctrine of academic freedom, according to the African News Agency.

On the other hand, Nobel prize winner George Smith, South African Jews for a Free Palestine, and former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein have written to members of the UCT council, invoking parallels between the plight of Palestinians in territories “occupied” by Israel and that suffered by blacks in South Africa during the years of apartheid, TimesLive reported.